


Noveau

by Milieu



Series: Femslash February 2019 [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Cheating, Drabble, F/F, Femslash February, Hurt/Comfort, Speakeasies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 20:06:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17793905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milieu/pseuds/Milieu
Summary: More and more often, Karin comes to Sakura for escape.





	Noveau

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "Historical AU" for trope bingo. I achieved bingo by doing this one, but I'll probably keep trying to fill prompts for the rest of the month and see how many I can do.

Nobody who knew Karin during the day knew where she went when she was alone. She doubted that anybody cared, and sometimes whether they even noticed.

Sasuke wasn't cruel to her. He wasn't! He just wasn't the prince she'd made him out to be when they were first engaged, either. Sasuke had had the family name but no money, and Karin had money but no future, and she'd been more than happy to get away from her guardian and all the memories her parents had left behind in that big, empty house, anyway. She'd told herself that even though they didn't really know each other, they could grow to be in love. She really had loved him for a while, or at least she'd convinced herself that she had.

He just... didn't notice anything, so wrapped up in feuding with his brother over the estate that had been frozen for years, over this and that sleight, over the fact that when they no longer had anything to fight over, they'd probably have nothing at all. He didn't notice the money skimmed off the accounts here and there, funneled into her purse and Naruto's pockets whenever he was hard up again. He didn't notice when she left.

He didn't notice the perfume on her clothes when she returned, the alcohol on her breath, or the dime-sized bruises on her neck. Karin wasn't sure if he noticed that she didn't touch him anymore. Maybe he preferred it that way.

Naruto was the one who had first brought her to the speakeasy. He was a good-for-nothing, in the vernacular of the circles that Karin moved in now, but she'd always have a soft spot for him. That was what family was for, or so she had thought before she saw how deep and cold the rifts ran between Sasuke and what was left of his family.

He'd turned up, like he did, and he'd known that she was sad even before she had realized it herself. She needed to get away; he knew just the place to show her.

The speakeasy was another world, dim and smoky in a way unlike the smoking lounges, the music too loud and punchy for any high society house. The busty blonde woman who tended the bar and both drank and gambled harder than any of her customers, the slim, dark-haired girl who took stock of you at the door and determined whether you were allowed entry or not, the man who always sat at the bar and teased the girls and got smacked upside the head for it by the bartender... she was used to their presence now, and they hers. For once in her life, Karin belonged somewhere. That said somewhere was an illegal bar full of the people that society had passed over in one way or another was somehow not surprising to her at this point.

Naruto was the one who had first brought her to the speakeasy, and he was the one who had introduced her to Sakura.

Karin had believed that she loved Sasuke at first sight. She thought that maybe she loved Sakura around the seventh or eighth time that she fell into Sakura's lap drunk and crying, finally too inebriated to be proud. Sakura took her glasses and set them carefully aside, stroked her hair and told her that everything would be alright even though they both knew otherwise. There was something in Sakura's face - and Naruto's too - when Karin would cry over Sasuke, and she hadn't yet deciphered it.

She was full of questions, but every time she came to Sakura, her mouth was too full of other words and the champagne bubbles on Sakura's tongue to ask.

**Author's Note:**

> This is also the second story in a row I've posted about speakeasies and rich women cheating on their husbands so I guess it's a thing now.


End file.
